A volunteer advocate for victims of domestic violence—which can affect up to 25 percent of U.S. families—describes how to safely leave an abusive relationship.
Deitz (Employed by God: Benefits Packaged with Faith, 2011) opens with several sobering statistics: In a single day in 2010, upwards of 70,000 victims nationwide reported incidents of domestic violence, and an estimated 70 percent of these involved alcohol. This guide focuses on the combination of abuse and alcoholism and is organized in three parts. “Drowning” shows how victims often lose their identity while trying to cope with their partner’s addiction. “Swimming” provides tips on how to withdraw from codependent behaviors and establish a separate identity. “Safe on Shore” advises readers how to stay strong and develop healthy relationships. Deitz uses the story of Lydia as a book-length case study: Lydia’s alcoholic husband threatened her physically, nearly killed her and emotionally abused her for 20 years before she left him. Deitz cites biblical scripture, though only sporadically: “I knew the Bible said God hates divorce. But … Scripture [also] says God despises ‘a man’s covering himself with violence.’” She provides deft analogies, as when illustrating the difficulty of leaving an abuser: Describing a car that has been violently vandalized, Deitz writes that “you certainly can’t jump in that vehicle and go. Before you can drive off, you have to make repairs. People who have suffered abuse also need time to recover and heal from shock.” Throughout, Deitz offers practical, specific guidance, such as having cash on hand as well as a list of important phone numbers and addresses. Each chapter ends with “Healing Practices” to encourage readers to apply what they’ve read to their own situations. Additional “Resources” of other helpful books and organizations, with phone numbers and web addresses, are also appended. Practical, helpful information presented in a positive, reassuring way.
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466375215
Page Count: 214
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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